When they disagree with court decisions, many conservatives call those decision makers 'activist judges.' But that did not happen recently with a federal court made a stay on the OSHA Vaccine Mandate permanent--that is until a higher court is asked to make a decision.
The whole problem with the conservative approach to the OSHA Vaccine Mandate is one of reductionism. Most conservatives have claimed that the central issue with the Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate is one of personal or individual liberty. They claim that vaccine mandates violate people's rights even though we've had vaccine mandates for a long time. In fact, some conservatives are so very much against Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates that some Republican governors have issued bans on Covid-19 vaccine mandates, as well as mask mandates issued not by the Biden Administration, but by businesses. Again, the claim is that such mandates violate people's individual freedoms.
But if that is the real reason, then conservatives who support bans on the Covid-19 vaccine mandates have failed to be consistent. There have been no such protests over vaccine mandates issued by schools from public schools to colleges requiring children to get vaccines to prevent various diseases.
When we add the bans on mask mandates to the mix, what seems to be the crux of the problem is the denial of the seriousness of the Covid-19 virus. The denial comes from a range of beliefs from the belief that the pandemic is a hoax to the belief that the vaccine is not necessary so long as if you take the right kinds of medicine. If you do, you WILL BE CURED of Covid-19.
From here we need to ask whether the conservative Covid-Deniers have a beef against Science since the scientific consensus supports the mandates and recognizes Covid-19 as a real and present danger. And if the real beef isn't against Science, then what gives?
What gives is that conservatives are channeling Post Modernism which relies on an outcome-based truth system. Outcome-based truth systems insist that the perceived or real outcomes of an individual claim or belief is what determines the validity of the claim. With Post Modernism for example, because some religious groups that claim to have an exclusive belief on what is truth have committed atrocities, there are no religious groups that claim to have a monopoly on the truth know the truth. So, if we take my faith community for example, the Christian faith, it cannot possibly be true because it claims to have an exclusive possession. of the truth. And, again, since it makes such an exclusive claim on the truth, it cannot be true for the people who belong to religions that make exclusive claims on the truth have committed atrocities. And indeed, Church history shows that Christians have committed many atrocities in the name of their faith.
So what would be the problem if some conservatives acknowledged what the Science is saying about Covid-19? There would be a conflict of interest for those conservatives who strongly supported Donald Trump's presidential campaign and/or who strongly opposed Biden's presidential campaign. That conflict of interest would be that they would have to reconcile their support for Trump or their opposition to Biden with the scientific consensus that very much seems to be in line with Covid-19 Mandate from the Biden Administration. Thus to reconcile the scientific consensus with either criticizing Trump for failure to adequately perform or Biden for taking some appropriate steps to battle the pandemic, one would have to discredit the science or to hold to their political positions. And so the more loyal one is to Trump or opposed to Biden, the more tempting it is to discredit the science otherwise one would have to admit some very uncomfortable claims about either their object of affection or object of loathing.
And so we come back to the court decision that puts a permanent stay on OSHA Vaccine Mandate. Those conservatives who agree with the Court decision because of their fondness for Trump or fear of Biden will not call the judges who decided in their favor 'activist judges.' That label will be reserved for judges of any court that would overturn the stay on the Vaccine Mandate.
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